The Rest of the Story
by Flynne
Summary: 2k3 fic, set in season 4. Leo's departure for Japan has brought up fears Don hoped he'd never have to face again. Michelangelo sees right through him and knows what he needs to hear, but it means telling the whole truth about Draco's attack on the lair. "I didn't tell you everything about where the time scepter sent me."


_2k3 fic, set in season 4, immediately after Leo leaves for Japan to see the Ancient One. Inspired by a headcanon from SkitsMix' fic "Secrets to Keep" (which everyone should read), that maybe Mikey wasn't as forthcoming as he could have been about what happened during the episode "Reality Check"._

* * *

 **The Rest of the Story**

The door to the lair closed, and Leo was gone.

Don let out the breath he hadn't realized he was holding. It came out in a huff, and the hollowness that followed made him feel as if he had been hit in the chest. He looked over his shoulder at Splinter, but even as he turned, he saw the tip of his father's tail disappear into his quarters. The screen slid shut.

Mikey and Raph just looked at each other before turning to Don. "Well...guess it's just the three of us," Mikey said uncertainly. "...Should we should start training?"

Nobody moved.

Don swallowed hard. Just the three of them. Three of them, and Leo was gone, and they didn't know exactly where he was going or when he'd be back, and he'd left his shell cell at home because the only thing they knew for certain was that there'd be no chance of any reception once he got to Japan.

Just the three of them.

The silence was thick as wet cement and twice as heavy, and the sudden breath Don took was more like a gasp. "I should get some work done. I'll, uh...I'll be at my desk if you need me." His brothers looked at him in mingled surprise and concern, but he turned away before they could say anything and retreated to his work station.

Casey's shell cell sat in the middle of his desk with the back cover removed. Don had designed the phones to be pretty damage resistant and reasonably water-proof (privately, he thought of them as Raph-resistant and Mikey-proof), but somehow Casey had managed to short out something inside, and Don hadn't figured out where the problem was yet. He picked up a pair of needle-nosed tweezers and a fine-tipped screwdriver and got to work.

He tried to tune out everything around him, and for a while, he was mostly successful: he was dimly aware of the sound of Mikey and Raph sparring, but it didn't last long. Splinter was still in his room, and neither of his brothers had much heart to go about training as usual without their sensei to keep them at it. Raph disappeared - into his room or up to the street, Don wasn't sure - and he thought he heard Mikey puttering in the kitchen briefly, but then it was silent.

Don hunched lower over his desk, silently swearing to himself as his screwdriver slipped and skittered away from where he had placed it. He closed his eyes for a moment to gather his thoughts and tried again, but his hand shook, and he threw down the tool. It skipped across his desk, hit the floor with a _clang_ , and spun away into the far wall. Don buried his face in his hands, breathing deeply and trying to swallow the knot of uneasiness in his throat.

"Uh...think you dropped something, Donny."

Mikey's voice at his elbow made Don yelp in surprise, and he jerked upright to see Mikey standing next to him, smirking down at him and twirling the screwdriver like a miniature baton between his fingers.

"Y-yeah...yeah, guess I did," Don said. He forced a smile and took the screwdriver when Mikey held it out to him. "Thanks." He turned back to the disassembled shell cell in a dismissive manner, but Mikey chose not to take the hint. Instead he pulled out the extra chair, spun it around, and straddled the seat backwards, resting his folded arms on the back of the chair.

"Casey really did a number on that, huh?"

"Well, I don't know if it was _Casey_. It could have been a Purple Dragon who actually damaged it. But the phone was in his possession when it broke, so...yeah, I guess."

"Can you fix it?"

"Probably, if I can concentrate." Even as he spoke, Don gave a mental wince. He heard the uncharacteristic sharp edge to his words, but they escaped before he could soften them.

Mikey didn't say anything, though, and he didn't leave. He sat quietly for a few moments before picking up the discarded back panel of the shell cell. He turned it over in his hands once or twice before putting it back on the table and giving it a nudge with his finger to make it spin.

Don's brow ridges drew closer together but he didn't respond, keeping his gaze deliberately averted; even when Mikey kept spinning the shell-shaped plate, even though he could feel his brother watching him expectantly out of the corner of his eye.

Not surprisingly, Mikey finally grew tired of waiting for Don to give in and talk to him. He broke the silence once again, this time trying a more direct approach. "What's going on, Donny?"

"I'm trying to fix a broken shell cell," Don answered curtly. But Mikey just tilted his head - eyes too knowing, one hand still idly spinning the shell on the tabletop - and Don's shoulders slumped as his resistance crumbled. "Leo's gone," he said. "We don't know where he's going or for how long. We can't contact him. And if something happens to him, we won't know until it's too late, we won't know where to start looking for him, and - " His throat constricted, locking the rest of his fumbling words inside his chest. But even with his half-formed, clumsy explanation, he saw Mikey's features shift with understanding. The spinning plastic shell on the table slowed and stopped.

The brothers had talked about Don's trip to the alternate timeline once, and only once. It had been nearly a week before Don had been able to tell them the truth about where the time scepter had sent him. They had listened without interrupting, asked a few questions when he was done - he didn't remember what the questions had been, just that he'd answered quietly, "I don't know" - and then the subject had dropped. They hadn't spoken of it again. And if they'd sat a bit closer together that evening when they'd settled in to watch a movie - if they'd fallen asleep on the couch and awakened the next morning in a crowded pile - they hadn't spoken of that, either.

They hadn't spoken of it, but even so, the memories lingered. They weren't always at the front of Don's mind. Sometimes he could almost forget about them. But then one would rise like a bubble through thick tar and burst into his mind when he least expected it. Don had thought perhaps he was the only one who carried the memories with him. Apparently he was wrong.

"It's not going to be like that, Don," Mikey said, voice as low and gentle as Don had ever heard it. "It's gonna be okay. Leo's coming back."

Something akin to panic was fluttering under Don's shell. "We don't know that," he blurted out. "Leo's changed, Mikey. I don't know how to talk to him anymore. And I never got the chance to ask him when he left or why - "

Somewhere in the middle of his outburst, his words had tangled and the line had blurred between his own brother and the scarred, world-weary face that haunted his memory, but Mikey kept up with him.

"Leo hasn't changed, Donny," he said. "Not that much. I mean, he's got some stuff to work through, but he's still in there." He huffed a laugh. "You shoulda heard the lecture he gave me before I had to fight Kluh again. And, you know, he hung out with me a lot helping me train before the match." He smiled wryly. "Believe me, Leo's still Leo. And he'll be back."

Don swallowed hard and looked away. "But I don't know...I never got the chance to find out…"

"Lord Simultaneous said they were alternate universes, right? We didn't see our own timelines."

"How does he know? Raph was on another planet, but it could have been our timeline. We have no way of knowing. And Leo was in Usagi's world, with people we know. How can Simultaneous be sure - "

"Because he _has_ to be!" The uncharacteristic sharpness of Mikey's response stopped Don short. He blinked at his brother in surprise, but Mikey wasn't looking at him. His gaze had slanted down at the shell cell case again. He nudged it with his finger until it wobbled in slow, unsteady circles on the tabletop. "I didn't tell you everything about where the time scepter sent me."

"What do you mean?"

"I told you that the turtles there - the versions of us there - were superheroes. But I didn't tell you about...about who they were fighting."

Don's brow wrinkled in confusion. "You said it was a supervillain with all the combined powers of the super turtles."

Still not making eye contact, Mikey nodded. "There were four super turtles. Casey and April were there, too. So I asked about Splinter. Graviturtle told me that they'd lost him, but…"

Dread congealed in Don's stomach, cold and heavy. "Let me guess," he said through a dry mouth.

Mikey's laugh was hard and humorless. "He Obi-wan Kenobi'd me. What he told me was true. 'From a certain point of view'. Which, you know...was fitting, seeing as their sensei had gone all Darth Vader on _them._ "

Don listened in dismay as Mikey told him the truth about what had happened: how Mikey had seen Splinter's kind eyes distorted by a sinister red light, seen the familiar whiskered face twisted in a sharp-toothed snarl, heard the cold mockery as the rat had called the turtles his sons.

Mikey stopped talking, then, but he didn't need to go on. Don already knew how the story had ended. He knew how the turtles' archnemesis had taken advantage of their weaknesses and trapped them. He knew how Mikey had come up with a plan to trick him, to take control of his doomsday device; he knew it had worked, and how they'd reversed the polarity on the the device to destroy the supervillain's fortress instead of the world outside. And he knew how Mikey and the turtles had escaped, leaving their enemy behind to be destroyed by his own superweapon.

Their enemy - who had actually been their father, and a twisted reflection of the father Mikey had left behind.

"Anyway," Mikey said, breaking the heavy silence, "that's how I know. The places we went...they _can't_ be our reality. I don't care what we saw. That won't happen to us." He finally lifted his head, and the hard, defiant light in his eyes made Don's chest ache. But then Mikey shook himself a little and blinked, the expression vanishing as quickly as it had come, and one side of his mouth lifted in a teasing smirk. "Besides," he added, "I stuck a turtle tracker on your shell months ago."

Don blinked in wide-eyed surprise. "You what?" He reached reflexively over his shoulder, hand traveling halfway to his shell before the penny dropped.

Mikey grinned. "Gotcha."

It shouldn't have been funny, but Don surprised himself by laughing. He shook his head ruefully, scrubbing a hand across his face - and if he paused briefly to rub his eyes until they stopped burning, neither brother mentioned it. He took a slow breath, in and out, and felt his tension start to slide away. "Thanks."

"Anytime." Mikey sighed, pushing back his chair as he stood. "I don't know about you, but talking about time travel voodoo makes me hungry. I think some chocolate chip cookies are in order. Wanna come be my sous chef?"

Don gestured at the gutted shell cell. "I really should finish working on this…"

"You can work while I bake, but when the cookies are done, so are you," Mikey said, jabbing an authoritative finger in Don's direction.

Don tried to smile and found that he could. "Deal." He half-turned back to his work table, but as Mikey passed behind him, he swiveled his chair and caught hold of his arm, tugging a little until Mikey stood in front of him. "Hey, Mikey...are you...are you all right?"

Mikey's smile was genuine, but a little sad. "I am if you are."

A huff of air that might have been a laugh escaped Don's chest, and he let himself fall forward until his forehead thumped gently against Mikey's plastron.

Mikey rested a hand on the back of his head and let him lean. "It's gonna be okay," he said. "Leo's gonna be okay." _And we're going to be okay._ He didn't say that last thought aloud, but Don heard it all the same.

Don nodded against him and closed his eyes. "Yeah," he answered quietly. And in spite of everything - his worry for Leo, the dark memories that lingered - he found that he could believe it.


End file.
